The FORNAV Designer is a WYSIWYG designer where you can visually arrange and format elements on your report. It has a clean layout structure and report controls, and the layout you see on the screen during design closely resembles how the final report will look when printed or viewed.

You have the option to use JavaScript as a supplement to writing C/AL code in reports. With FORNAV, you can now do everything in JavaScript that you can do in AL, and much more. For example, you can calculate sums, format dates and numbers in JavaScript expressions, use request page variables to filter JavaScript records.
FORNAV has its own JavaScript editor and you can write JavaScript in many places in FORNAV.

Using the ForNAV Designer, you can easily create your custom layouts without any coding. In contrast to other partner-developed tailored report layouts, the ForNAV custom layouts will continue to keep working in the future, including with all new versions of Business Central, helping you achieve low TCO.

Standard Business Central doesn’t let you save or track changes made to BC documents. With FORNAV, you can automatically archive FORNAV documents in Business Central. With a simple setup, whenever you run, preview, print, print to PDF, or send to Excel, these documents are archived, giving you a trace of these actions. You can easily open and view archived documents or download them locally. This also allows you to remove documents while retaining a trace of them in the archive history, where you can view the different activities performed on each document. This feature also helps track report usage (run, printed, saved as PDF), making it easier to keep only the reports you need and remove those that aren’t used. Watch how it works.

The FORNAV Designer makes it simple to show or hide report content based on complex conditions. This allows you to hide a column in a report if there is no value in any of the records in that column.

The ForNAV cmdlet includes a free Translation Tool that allows you to translate any type of AL extension. It converts Caption MLs in txt files or xlf (XLIFF) files to Excel or JSON, and from Excel or JSON to Caption MLs in txt files or xlf files.

The FORNAV Designer can access all extensions, meaning that you can easily drag and drop fields from any extension to a FORNAV report and thereby build reports with data coming from any extension you might have.

The formatting of addresses does not require any coding in JavaScript. You can even gain access to enhanced address formatting with the additional option to format addresses.

You can simply (and without any coding) add assembly lines (Bill of Material or BOM) to several of your standard FORNAV reports.

You can fill temporary tables in AL-code and use them in custom layouts. FORNAV gives you the possibility to add new data items to a layout without modifying the underlying AL-code.

Microsoft does not support custom fonts in Business Central Cloud, but FORNAV does. With FORNAV, you can use custom fonts in your reports without having to install these fonts on your service tier and client computers. The FORNAV Designer detects that a custom font is being used in the design, and automatically embeds it in the report layout.

Intelligent word wrapping is possible. Because FORNAV supports the Softhyphen Unicode character that gives Windows hints about where to break up long words and insert hyphens when needed, soft hyphens are inserted for the most common word in a given language.

Working with PDF in FORNAV is also made simpler. You can:

– Use the advanced PDF features (BullZip), to add an existing PDF to a Sales Invoice or Purchase Order, for example, to print assembly instructions or legal conditions
– Password protect PDF files using JavaScript
– Add editable fields, checkboxes, and signatures to a PDF
– Apply different PDFs, depending on the data – for example, Language (Append/Prepend PDF)
– Sign PDF files

You have the possibility to grow and shrink layout controls and report sections to fit content, using the FORNAV CanGrow property. This is particularly handy for controls where you normally don’t know the exact size of the content (for example, a Text Box or the Address control).

Manage long text blocks in your reports. The FORNAV text splitter and HTML text splitter allow to display lengthy texts over multiple report pages. Your text is not chopped but instead split over multiple pages, at a place that is natural.

Adding transport totals to your Business Central Reports is simple and easy.

Adding multiple headers and footers to your Business Central Reports is simple and easy.

Adding HTML content in reports can be done in a matter of minutes.

It is possible to use BLOB fields with text, HTML, images, or PDF content.

Creating report layouts using the FORNAV Designer is simple and intuitive. Adding tables and fields to layouts does not require changing the code. In fact, the FORNAV Low Code/No Code approach means that you can customize or even create your own reports without touching a single line of code. As a result, you do not need to have highly specialized developers to handle your clients’ reports. Instead, you can give this task to less experienced development resources or even consultants.
Even advanced formatting is possible for some fields to get a better result (for example, numbers and dates). The formats supported are Microsoft .net formatting, Dynamics formatting, as well as AutoFormatExpr and AutoFormatType.

Working with a dynamic dataset means that you have full access to all fields and captions from the tables you have selected, and this also includes extensions you have made to standard tables, and your own tables. You don’t have to define a dataset before you get started and you don’t have to define columns before adding a new field. You simply drag and drop the fields you want to your report. You can always be sure that the information in your reports is current and reflects the latest data in Business Central.

Adding barcodes to a report is straightforward and can be done with a few clicks. FORNAV comes out of the box with a long list of available barcodes. Adding QR codes to a report is also easily done in just a few clicks. FORNAV also makes it possible to add Swiss QR Bill support to Business Central. When you work with FORNAV, your barcodes and QR codes (including the Swiss QR code) are rendered as vector graphics (rather than bitmap), which means that they can be scaled correctly by the PDF reader – and are always read properly by barcode readers.

The FORNAV Customizable Report Pack works straight out of the box and can be used as it is. Should you need to customize it, for example to add your corporate logo, or add information specific to your business, you need to use the FORNAV Designer. The Designer is a set of tools that you can use to easily customize your Report Pack reports, design your own reports, as well as use other FORNAV solutions such as Direct Print and File Service.
Read more about the FORNAV Customizable Report Pack.

The FORNAV Designer supports Business Central Essential and Premium editions.

The FORNAV Designer is available in all countries where Business Central is available.

Supported languages include: English, Danish, German, Dutch, Finish, Islandic, Norwegian, Swedish, French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Portuguese, and Czech.

The FORNAV Designer can be downloaded on the FORNAV website. When you download FORNAV without a license file, you will get a trial version of our solutions. FORNAV trial downloads are fully functional versions of our solutions. They do, however, include a prominent “Trial Version” watermark that does not allow you to use our solution and reports for professional purposes. To remove this watermark, you must purchase a FORNAV License. To do this, you must get in touch with one of our partners.

It is possible to get a free trial of the FORNAV solutions. These trial versions are free of charge, and you can use them while investigating how FORNAV can help you simplify working with documents and reports in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. They do, however, include a prominent “Trial Version” watermark that does not allow you to use our solution and reports for professional purposes. To remove this watermark, you must purchase a FORNAV License. To do this, you must get in touch with one of our partners.